An easy, online, social library catalog

One thing that I learned in my short visit to Kosovo is that there are many libraries there, and I'm sure in every region and in every country, that are small and have no catalog. (There are also large libraries without catalogs, but the solution for them is more difficult than what I am proposing here.) I went online to see what software might be available for these libraries, and came to the conclusion that 1) the software they need does not exist and 2) there's no reason for catalog creation to be as complex as we've made it. As a matter of fact, if we look around us there are many online systems that are free to users, or nearly so, require no training, and that function on a fairly large scale. What I'm proposing here is actually no more complex than most social networking systems, but with a library bent. Here's what we need:

1. A social networking site where the society members are libraries, not individuals.
2. The ability to capture copy cataloging from other libraries or create cataloging on the site itself.
3. Full Unicode support, both for the interface and for the data.
   
4. The ability to capture and create records using a MARC-compatible format.
   
5. The ability to export the library catalog records in MARC format.
6. A reports function that could print off the results of searches or even the library's inventory, so it could be used off-line.
   
7. The creation of groups of "library friends," that is other libraries whose data should be included in searches and displays. This will facilitate sharing and also will serve users in areas where resources are scarce and scattered.
   
8. A search and display interface that looks like a modern library catalog
9. It all has to be easy to use with no training required, and not require any technical support on the part of the library.
   

Sound impossible? Hardly. Essentially, I'm thinking of a cross between MySpace and Librarything, with a user interface that looks something like Scriblio. It could also be called a Worldcat with an easy cataloging interface and very, very low user fees. It may benefit from some of the features of the wiki world, with shared editing of bibliographic data, so I guess I should add the Open Library into the mix.

There are many people encouraging libraries to use Open Source systems like Koha, but the libraries I'm talking about here have no capability to run software, much less Unix-based software. They may have only one computer, and it has to be used for everything: Internet access, office applications like document creation, and, if they have the capability, the library catalog. For those that do have at least part-time Internet access, the ideal system would be run online, with no technical requirements on the library's part.

The MARC requirement is an important one. The system does not need to support the full MARC record, but support for a standard minimum record means that the libraries can use each other's data for copy cataloging, and that some time in the future they may be able to contribute their records to library systems or to regional union catalogs. The ability to form networks between libraries is essential to overcome the incredible scarcity that exists for people living in rural and under-developed areas.

We already have many of the parts of this system, and I'm confident that the technology is no problem. We need the organization and the sustainability. Please send along any suggestions you have for how we can get this done.

Photos from Kosovo trip

Are posted on Picasa. I've captioned them briefly. The "American Corner" libraries appear to be a replacement for the old USIS libraries; basically a library with American books and journals, set up in many countries where there is an Embassy. I also took some videos, mainly of the countryside, which I will try to upload to Youtube.

Code4lib talk now available as video

Thanks to Noel Peden and others who worked hard to make available the videos of talks at Code4lib 2008, the video of my talk can be watched via the Internet Archive. They did a great job of sync-ing the talk and the slides, and now I wish my slides had been nicer. I have recently purchased a Mac Mini in an attempt to improve the aesthetics of my presentations and documents. You can view some of these nicer presentations which I used in Kosovo. I am hoping to be able to create my own webcasts in the future.

Last day in Kosovo, and various thoughts

I'm back home, but want to recount my last day in Kosovo and some thoughts about the libraries there.

Friday morning I was back at the national library to give my final talk, "Libraries in the Web." I had re-done this as a version of the talk I give about getting more library visibility in the web. As I packed up my bags in the morning and thought about the talk I had the sinking feeling that this one would be totally irrelevant to the audience, so I was just wanting to do it and get it over with. I had brought with me books for the American Corner library (one each by H Clinton, Obama and McCain). I also had with me, on the advice of an American living in Prishtina, thirty small American flag pins. I found them a bit of an embarrassment, but she had said that people love anything having to do with America. I took the pins with me to the auditorium and set them out on the front table, figuring that if people weren't interested they would pass them by and I'd just feel a little silly. They went like hotcakes. Not only that, my talk went over well, and I got good questions.

The reason for the interest in making libraries visible on the web, I believe, is that these libraries have existed in deep isolation for a long time. Many of the librarians have a great desire to connect to the larger library community in the same way that the entire country is looking to become part of a world that it was cut off from for so long.

There are many things that the libraries there need. First, they need to restore the physical spaces. Many libraries became government or military offices during the "conflict" of the late 90's. Next, they need books. To save the books, people took them home; many people also have in their homes books that have a family history (often manuscripts, often hundreds of years old). It looked to me that in the larger towns the library could have a collection of 3-10K books in the near future.

Then they need a way to create a catalog -- an inventory of the books. This has to be cheap, if not free, and must run on absolutely minimal hardware. They do not need functions like circulation, acquisitions, or serials check-in -- those just aren't issues at the moment. But they need to create an inventory of their holdings in a standard format so the country can create some semblance of a union catalog. The director, Dr. Bashoti, understands the importance of a union catalog, but doesn't have anyone who could advise on the technology. This is why they are adding an Aleph installation in Gjilan, because that is the obvious way to create a library network. Unfortunately, Aleph will be too expensive and too complex for the smaller libraries.

The librarians need training. They have moved from a Soviet-style system to a decade (at least) of disruption of civic life, and now they wish to embrace the West. The kind of training they need in some cases is quite basic: what resources there are available on the Internet and how to find them; they need an abbreviated catalog code in Albanian; they need information on how libraries use e-resources to serve users; they need some idea of the ways that libraries can serve schools and students.

They also need infrastructure. This is one of the great needs throughout Kosovo, where the roads have potholes as big as a car, the electricity fails numerous times during the day, and there is no trash pickup. (Occasionally, KFOR stations schedule a trash pickup in their area. Otherwise, trash just goes into piles alongside the road.)

The library infrastructure that is needed is mainly social -- they need a library association that gives the librarians a professional context and a way to meet colleagues. They need a coordinated way to purchase books and materials, so each library is not going out looking for vendors on its own. They need someone to organize licensing for the entire country. They need a vision for the libraries that each library can work toward.

Like the sign says, Kosovo is "newborn" -- there's a lot of hope for the future, but a long way to go.

Thursday, Gjilan and Gracanica

The headers are showing up here in Cyrillic (at least something similar, perhaps Serbian), so I have a hard time finding the "log in" button.

Today I started off at the American High School, actually now a K-12. It's something like the Ecole Bilangue -- the students are local, the classes are mainly in English, the teachers are American and Canadian. (They couldn't get enough American teachers, so they expanded to Canada.) I went into a classroom and chatted with the students about libraries and the Internet. When one student said that she couldn't image reading a book on a screen I pulled out my PDA with a book on it and passed it around. Then we moved on to audio books and I happened to have "On the Road" on my PDA, so the students played with that for a bit. I visited their library and chatted with the head of the school (a retired Canadian, I believe) about how to get them more resources. The students don't have the concept of borrowing books, but he's willing to work through the issue of helping them learn about that, knowing that some books will be lost in the process.

The big issue for this school and for a lot of libraries is how, as a small institution, to afford subscriptions to online resources. For books you can get donations, but there isn't a kind of charity that will get you online access. Nor can you get online access in small quantities. There aren't the institutional structures here that would make it possible to form licensing consortia.



In Gjilan, it turns out that we were there to celebrate the signing of a contract extension that will allow the public library to use Aleph. There were many speeches and musical interludes, plus two sessions of epic poems read to musical accompanyment. We then went into a room of the library to look at a selection of books that had been donated to the library through KFOR -- a sadly motley collection of well-meaning; everything from out of date reference books to a copy of "The Internet for Dummies." Interestingly there were a number of books on women's health.



After Gjilan we stopped in Gracinica (the first c should have a diacritic). There we visited a 14th century orthodox Christian church that is run by some rather aged nuns who also keep a large garden and a thriving apiary. The church is stunning, entirely covered on the inside with frescos. We had to find a nun to open up the church (after passing by the permanent Danish KFOR guards at the gate). This is a Serbian area of Kosovo, but the translator with us from the Embassy spoke Serbian as well as Albanian. We visited the church, then Laura, who has taken me through all of this week as the Embassy member charged with Library Week, wanted to buy some of the nuns' honey, and I wanted some of their beeswax candles. We had to negotiate a bit because this area still functions in Serbian dinars rather than the Euros that the rest of Kosovo uses. (This is all of 3 miles from Prishtina.)

Tonight I am meeting an American friend of a friend for dinner, then I pack (the suitcase that only just got here) and get ready for tomorrow. I give a talk in the morning, then have meetings until it is time to go to the airport. Around 4 pm I board a plane for Vienna. I spend the night there, then on Saturday a.m. I'm off to Franfurt to connect to a flight for San Francisco. I hope the travel fairies are with me on the trip -- I could use a smooth flight home, even though this trip has been a relatively easy one.

Kosovo, Wednesday

This was a somewhat "ordinary" day in Prishtina. The US Embassy folks here have been kind enough to get me out of some of the ceremonial activities so that I can meet one-on-one with librarians. So, for example, I showed one person how to order a new copy of the DDC, and also how to find Dewey numbers for books that don't show up in the LC catalog (hint: WorldCat). This was at a small library, and when I told them that a library system would automatically download the bibliographic data for books from LoC or other sources, their eyes truly lit up.

Now I'm watching Bugs Bunny in Albanian. As a credit to the animators, the language really doesn't change the viewing experience.

Here are some tidbits:

Some older men still wear the traditional white wool felt Albanian hat. When it rains, they wrap it in a plastic bag.

Bill Clinton's "My Life" is available here in Albanian. (Actually, they seem to translate a lot of works.)

I went to the local market. Basically: cigarettes, onions, eggs, onions. And a bit of everything else.



The student bookstore had various locally created computer books, guides to Windows 95, 98, and XP; the Excel guide included a disk with the software -- obviously not with the Windows Genuine logo. An American Fulbright fellow said that you could get the entire Adobe suite for a few euros. I feel a bit sheepish about telling them the virtues of free software -- it's all almost free here.

KFOR is in force. We pass armored cars on the roads and have gotten unnervingly close to a few helicopters outside of the city. There are lots of UN cars driving around. You know you are in a war zone (or an erstwhile one) when the official cars have their acronym written on the roof as well as the door.




For dinner tonight I had a salad of cucumbers, onions and yogurt, followed by grilled calf brains. I'm a bit queasy, but rather proud of myself.

We're having intermittent power blackouts this evening. I'm glad I am battery powered for the most part.

Tomorrow we go to Gjilan, which is someplace that is not Prishtina but that we can get to by car in an hour or so. We will be celebrating their implementation of Aleph 500 and listening to some talks. (BTW, someone today after my talk asked if Aleph, which is the system they have, is right for them. I tactfully suggested that there may be modules that they do not need (e.g. circulation, since they don't circulate books), and that it is quite possible that a system designed for American and Western European libraries isn't perfect for them. Whew!)

Day 2 - Prizren

This was a totally AMAZING day, in so many ways. I hardly know where to begin.

We went to the "Inter-municipal Library" of Prizren. Prizren is a historical city going back to Roman times. It was a major trade route, and also one of those areas that was often conquered -- Romans, Ottoman Turks, 14th century Serbs. It holds a lot of Ottoman history and also still has a significant Catholic population. It is thought of as the most ethnically diverse city in Kosovo.

The road from Prishtina to Prizren is a two-laner with everything from cars, trucks, tractors, and donkey carts. Along the road there is an interesting mix of new construction (much of it looking to be stalled at the half-finished stage) and abandoned buildings, probably from the Yugoslav era. Construction, both old and new, does not look very solid, but there are many business and office buildings being built just outside of Prishtina, which shows at least an optimism about economic prosperity. (There were also sheep, cows, and some of the scruffiest looking dogs I have ever seen, but who stood by the road just defying the traffic to encroach on their territory.)

At the library, we arrived for a celebration of the second anniversary of the American Corner in their library. The AC space is small, but a small group of volunteers has turned it into a learning center, with English classes, movie nights, book groups, and activities for children. Oh, the children! We came into the meeting room and there were about 25 children at the front of the room in their finest: the little boys in suits, the girls in what I can only think of as "princess dresses" -- white and sparkly. I'm guessing that the age was about 5-6, but there was a great variety of sizes. I didn't get where they were from, but I'm guessing there must be an American school or an English language program at a school. They each wore a paper crown with a sticker with the logo of the American Corner. The US Embassy representative I was with whispered to me that the stickers were created by the embassy as bookplates for the books in the American Corner. So there were these little kids wearing book-plate tiara's, and the teacher led them in a number of songs. They did "Bingo was a dog" (or whatever it is called); "You are my sunshine", "The ABC song" and other great songs. It was definitely "through the looking glass". At the end, they shouted out in unison (and one little girl could really shout!) "Thank you America!"



Then volunteers from the American Corner came and talked about their work, in English. This was a real point of pride for them, and they had clearly worked very hard.

Next I gave a talk on digital libraries and digitization. Not too interesting. I did get a few interesting questions about dealing with old materials and about copyright. Laura, the US Embassy rep, had told me that the library had done a project where they asked local citizens to bring in old books that they had, and the library scanned some pages and prepared a book "catalog". One of the librarians went and got a copy of the book catalog and an old manuscript book, and brought them for us to see. Just amazing! They have a huge collections of manuscripts that have not had hardly any care, and many of the most incredible works are still in the hands of individuals. I asked for, and was given, a copy of the book that they did, and will show it around. This is a place where there are historical works that have probably never been seen by scholars.

From the library we went to the Gazi Mehmet Pasha mosque and library. The library is a small octagonal building that was built to be GMP's tomb. Unfortunately, he died in battle elsewhere and his body never made it back home. The US contributed funds to restore the building and discovered the empty tomb under the floor. The building houses a library of books, mostly donated by locals, mostly manuscript, and mostly in states of disrepair. (I took some pictures with the embassy's camera, so I will post them and link from here in a few days.) The building is unheated, probably reasonably dry, but the books are not being kept in an archival environment. The folks showing us around told us that the library covers a wide range of topics. There also was a box on the floor with bits and pieces -- single sheets, book covers (one with what looked like Venetian style end papers) -- and they told us that in another building they have many, many boxes like that. We looked at a book that was printed from plates, dated 1768. That was one of the more modern ones.



We also visited the mosque -- small, but with that stunning austerity that mosques have. And lots of stories about being rescued from assorted enemies.

As we left, I was given truly heartfelt thanks from the man who is responsible for the library and mosque; perhaps in his late thirties (I'm bad at ages), he talked about the hope that he has for his children, and how grateful he is that "America" stepped in and allowed them to restore the library and preserve their heritage.

Can I say now how inadequate I felt? This is one of the many places on this planet where $50K could transform our knowledge. Some scanning equipment and a bit of metadata work would make previously unseen works visible. I'm sure there are thousands of places like this on the planet, maybe untold thousands. It just really hurts to see it first hand.

On to day 3. Oh, and my suitcase finally arrived, just when I was really beginning to appreciate minimalist living. But now I have my camera with me, so I will try to make up for time with the photos.